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One sample point of one person's experience: Product's built based on brainstorming: NEVER worked. Product built around solution to actual problems I've exper

One sample point of one person's experience: Product's built based on brainstorming: NEVER worked. Product built around solution to actual problems I've experienced: Always worked, BUT may not have a large enough TAM. The best way to actually find problems to solve is to replicate something else (as a learning process to actually find the real product you need to build), or talk to people who have problems: e.g. Try an replicate a product with relatively simple core functionality all the way-end-to-end. During that process you'll probably discover paint point that aren't addressed by any product. Example from building: Build some GenAI based app that allows users to upload a video and have it "horrified." There may only be a small market in that, but the framework you build to do it could be productized (or subsets of the problem). A simple to use full stack solution where folks can focus on the image / video generation model prompting fine tuning, and then one-click deploy that model wrapped in a whitelabeled ios app with monetization built-in, etc. <-- sell the shovels. Example from talking: Lot's of buddies have challenges with bringing AI based coding tools into the organization because most don't support on-prem. Is there an on-prem solution that acts like a DMZ? That is, Cursor team could securely deploy their models to containers running on on-prem hardware (with layers of physical and software security to prevent exfiltration of the model weights), while companies can load their propriety data into another container. Win-win.

jschveibinz 2y ago
+1 from me. I'm an investor and entrepreneur, and I can offer that this is spot-on advice. Engineers like to build stuff. But business is about solving OTHER people's problems. It's not necessarily about building cool stuff. Get some real world experience. Learn where the holes are. Then build a business around filling the holes.
ericmcer 2y ago
That does seem like the best way to go about it, but I have family who are doctors and they frequently talk about how tired they are of tech guys who read "The Mom Test" who now skulk around asking probing questions about pain points in a doctors daily work. It just seems like any time there is a repeatable process for doing something, people will latch onto it and then do it until it is totally exhausted. Tech Entrepreneur especially has such a low barrier to entry and so many 'How To' guides that it feels super impacted. Makes me wish software was closer to art, where someone has something they need to make just for the sake of bringing it into existence.
- light_triad 2y ago
  Great point! It's very difficult to build for a domain in which you're not an expert (non doctors building for doctors, non lawyers building for lawyers etc). You're going to lack a lot context, knowing what's important and how people use existing tools (versus what they say about how they use existing tools). Considering that business is about compounding unfair advantages, if you have to hire people to tell you if you're going in the right direction it's going to be tough.
  - jacknews 2y ago
    "business is about compounding unfair advantages" clipped into my book of quotes
- hgomersall 2y ago
  Tbf, medical software is a whole world unto itself. They do actually need serious solutions to their innumerable software problems, but it's really really hard to deliver those solutions for a whole host of reasons, from legislative to monopolies.
- altdataseller 2y ago
  That, and when people ask me about my problems, i tell them about it. But then i realize they want to know about problems that have a scalable or easy solution they can build. In other words, I gave them my damn problem but they arent interested in solving them. So no, i aint talking to you about my problems anymore
- authorfly 2y ago
  Exactly. The unspoken thing about startups/the mom test is that now the majority of startups try to do it that way. Well, 90% of startups still fail. So why do the thing that 90% of the time doesn't work? Really successful startups tend to be strongly unique and lead by a few years of personal experience with the problem. Perseverance and defiance(to the way things are/problem remaining) can't be bought though and it won't sell a book.
- numpad0 2y ago

jschveibinz 2y ago

+1 from me. I'm an investor and entrepreneur, and I can offer that this is spot-on advice. Engineers like to build stuff. But business is about solving OTHER people's problems. It's not necessarily about building cool stuff. Get some real world experience. Learn where the holes are. Then build a business around filling the holes.

ericmcer 2y ago

That does seem like the best way to go about it, but I have family who are doctors and they frequently talk about how tired they are of tech guys who read "The Mom Test" who now skulk around asking probing questions about pain points in a doctors daily work. It just seems like any time there is a repeatable process for doing something, people will latch onto it and then do it until it is totally exhausted. Tech Entrepreneur especially has such a low barrier to entry and so many 'How To' guides that it feels super impacted. Makes me wish software was closer to art, where someone has something they need to make just for the sake of bringing it into existence.

light_triad 2y ago
Great point! It's very difficult to build for a domain in which you're not an expert (non doctors building for doctors, non lawyers building for lawyers etc). You're going to lack a lot context, knowing what's important and how people use existing tools (versus what they say about how they use existing tools). Considering that business is about compounding unfair advantages, if you have to hire people to tell you if you're going in the right direction it's going to be tough.
- jacknews 2y ago
  "business is about compounding unfair advantages" clipped into my book of quotes
hgomersall 2y ago
Tbf, medical software is a whole world unto itself. They do actually need serious solutions to their innumerable software problems, but it's really really hard to deliver those solutions for a whole host of reasons, from legislative to monopolies.
altdataseller 2y ago
That, and when people ask me about my problems, i tell them about it. But then i realize they want to know about problems that have a scalable or easy solution they can build. In other words, I gave them my damn problem but they arent interested in solving them. So no, i aint talking to you about my problems anymore
authorfly 2y ago
Exactly. The unspoken thing about startups/the mom test is that now the majority of startups try to do it that way. Well, 90% of startups still fail. So why do the thing that 90% of the time doesn't work? Really successful startups tend to be strongly unique and lead by a few years of personal experience with the problem. Perseverance and defiance(to the way things are/problem remaining) can't be bought though and it won't sell a book.
numpad0 2y ago